A$AP Rocky has a lot on his plate: he recently served as a co-chair for the 2025 Met Gala; he’s in the headlines for expecting his third baby with Rihanna; and he’s featured in the teaser trailer for the upcoming movie Highest 2 Lowest. In the Spike Lee-directed film, he acts opposite Denzel Washington, which he says was a “dream come true.”

“It was difficult to not fan the f*** out every millisecond of the f****** duration. It was crazy — it’s f****** Denzel, man,” he tells Variety. He notes Denzel was in Malcolm X, one of the first movies he ever loved. “I don’t give a f*** how successful [I am]: I’m always gonna be a student and a fan of certain people, and I’m always going to give them their flowers. I’m never going to be too big to be able to say that I had to hold my composure from not fanning out.”

As big as the moment was, Rocky says he wasn’t at all nervous to work with Denzel. “I was born for this. I’m not gonna waste nobody’s time,” he says. “This is what I do — this is the same approach you would take to making an album or to directing or designing anything: You’ve got to give it your all.”

Highest 2 Lowest will premiere at Cannes Film Festival, featuring Rocky as Yung Felon, an aspiring rapper trying to get noticed by a music mogul (Washington). He says the film was his “only escape” during his gun assault trial and similarly included a courtroom reckoning that allowed him to “embody the character so well.”

He explains, “I was able to act like a piece of s*** who was going away for a long time but didn’t realize the consequences, because in real life, I knew exactly what the consequences felt like.”

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